Delicatessen- a movie review

During our 4pm - 7pm class on a Friday, our lecturer showed us a french film named Delicatessen. It directed by Marc Caro, cartoonist and Jean-Pierre Jeunet filmed in 1991. Delicatessen was their first feature film. This film is a black comedy, meaning humour which arises from something cynical and skepticism. 

The film was recorded in a run down apartment building with a butcher's shop on the ground floor owned by the landlord, Clapet (Jean- Clayde Deyfrus). He pays the postman to advertise a vacancy for a handyman, also a way to lure victims to be murdered and sold as meat to overcome the food shortage France was facing. Louison (Dominique Pinon), an ex-clown took the job as the handy man. He proved to be a efficient handyman as fixed up the  Julie (Marie-Laure Dougnac), Clapet's daughter soon develops feelings for Louison which makes Clapet more than willing to make Louison his next victim. Julie, descends into the sewers to the Trologistes, a group of vegetarian French rebels, to seek help to rescue Louison. The way Clapet acts shows that he loves his daughter and this is proven more when he talks to his wife about Julie refusing to talk to him because the was going to murder Louison.

The film features different families living in one apartment building with Clapet as their leader. Clapet is portrayed as a very stern man who is actually very loving towards his daughter. He buys sweets for her which are very expensive due to the post apocalyptic situation they are in. He is terrified of the idea that Louison is going to take his daughter away from him, leading him to try to murder Louison as the next victim for meat. His tenants fear that they maybe next in line if there was no other victim to feed the other tenants with meat.

Louison who is the main character is a quirky fellow. He was an entertaining character to watch. He was a vegetarian and was disgusted that people could practice cannibalism. He was a good maintanence man who was liked by all the tenants.

The film portrays cannibalism to be acceptable in the group of people living in the apartment. My opinion is, why practice cannibalism? They could just be vegetarians like Louison. It is shown that Clapet has many bags of corn in his cellar. That would be enough to feed everyone for a long time. Could humans be so desperate for meat that they are willing to kill other humans for it? And if they could, how will they live with themselves knowing that they had murdered and eaten the meat of their own species?

Marcel, the middle aged lady who always hears voices in her head convincing her that the after world was a better place compared to the world she was living in. Maybe she felt so guilty for practicing cannibalism that she started to believe she should leave the world. Her attempts in suicide usually end in a comical manner.